G I Y G A S

Giygas, also known as Giegue, and Gyiyg (ギーグ, Gīgu) in Japan, is a character in the Mother video game series by Nintendo, created by Shigesato Itoi. The character serves as the main antagonist and final boss of Mother and its sequel, Mother 2/EarthBound. In the series, he invades Earth in an attempt to wipe out humanity in Mother, and returns in EarthBound where he conquers the world and sends his forces into the past to prevent protagonist Ness from defeating him. The battle against Giygas, which depicts him in turmoil, drew inspiration from a Japanese film which traumatized Itoi as a child. He has received positive reception with critics referring to his battle as one of the creepiest in video games, and considered one of the greatest, most terrifying and most iconic video game antagonists of all time. Giygas was designed and written by the creator of the EarthBound series, Shigesato Itoi, and debuted in the original Mother, where he is called Giegue in the English localization. In an interview on his website, Itoi describes how his inspiration for the final battle with Giygas in EarthBound resulted from a traumatic childhood event where he accidentally viewed the wrong movie at a theater, a Shintoho film entitled Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin. The film featured a murder scene near a river that Itoi mistook for a rape scene which affected him so much that his parents began to worry about his well-being. Years later, Itoi integrated the experience into Giygas' dialogue for the final battle. Itoi described Giygas as something that people cannot make sense of, but also as a living being who deserves love. He described the film scene as a combination of atrocity and eroticism, and that is what his lines are in the end. While designing this battle, Itoi spoke all of the text out loud while another staff member, Matchan Miura, wrote it down. He spoke each hiragana character one-after-another because he found it scarier. There has been a misunderstanding regarding the influence of the film on Giygas, with some believing that imagery, dialogue, or audio from that film were used here, when the only thing Itoi took from it was the ability to "manipulate an audience's emotional state". Music composer Hirokazu Tanaka described Giygas as the "embodiment of evil". As a result, he composed the music in a certain way based on the player's proximity to him. For example, in battles where Ness and company encounter someone or something under Giygas' control, the music and sound effects reflect this. Before the release of EarthBound, the localization team had at one point considered localizing Giygas as his original name Giegue or Geek. It was speculated that the change from Giegue to Giygas was due to a change in localization staff. An urban legend exists that suggests that the final battle with Giygas in EarthBound was an "alien abortion". Marcus Lindblom, a member of the English localization team, acknowledged the urban legend, noting that he appreciated the speculation, but debunked the idea as an official interpretation. Giygas appears in the Family Computer video game Mother. Giygas was raised by Maria, a woman abducted along with her husband George by Giygas' alien race from Earth in the early 1900s. George studied the aliens' PSI powers without permission and escaped back to Earth. Once he matured, Giygas was tasked by his people to make sure that PSI never spread onto Earth. However, Giygas did not want to betray those who raised him, particularly Maria. In the end, he forced himself to detach from Maria and began preparations for the aliens' invasion. Eighty years later, strange things start happening on Earth. These events are eventually revealed to be the work of Giygas. Maria, now a Queen in a magical world called Magicant, explains everything to the protagonists of Mother after her memories are restored. When the protagonists encounter Giygas, he explains his motives to them while attacking them with his PSI power. Maria urges her descendant, the also PSI-user protagonist Ninten to sing her Eight Melodies, which weakens Giygas. Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd sing together, forcing Giygas to surrender and flee. Giygas also appears in the SNES sequel EarthBound. Giygas is an unseen villain for most of the story, although he possesses humans, animals, and objects who unknowingly do his bidding. According to a character from the future named Buzz Buzz, Giygas destroys the universe ten years in the future. One of his key minions is Pokey Minch, a boy who lived in Ness's neighborhood. At first, Dr. Andonuts (the father of playable character Jeff) believes that Giygas is residing deep within the Earth, and transports himself and the party there using a machine called the Phase Distorter. When they arrive, they find that Giygas is attacking from that exact location, but from innumerable years in the past. The only way the protagonists can get to Giygas' time period is to alter the Phase Distorter to transport them back in time. When the group finally reaches Giygas, he initially resembles Ness while in the device called the "Devil's Machine". Pokey reveals that Giygas' PSI power has grown so strong that it destroyed his mind and drove him mad. Pokey then turns the Devil's Machine off and releases Giygas, who now takes the form of a swirling red agonized face. At this point, Giygas' words and attacks are nondescript and nonsensical, more akin to a stream of consciousness than anything else. Giygas is eventually destroyed by Paula, who prays to the protagonists' friends and family for help. Her praying eventually reaches the player, and the combined prayers do enough damage to Giygas to kill him. Since appearing in EarthBound, Giygas has received largely positive reception. His role and design was regarded as contrasting with the otherwise lighthearted tone of the rest of EarthBound's story by Brittany Vincent for G4TV. Cassandra Ramos for RPGamer identified him as one of her favorite villains, while 1UP.com staff described the battle with Giygas as one of the 25 best boss battles, citing the audio and imagery of Giygas as well as the final portion of the battle. Jeremy Parish for 1UP.com used the battle as an example of how games subvert expectations, where the protagonists employ prayer instead of their most powerful attacks to win.[13] IGN staff included the battle with Giygas in their list of the 10 most cinematic video game moments.[14] NGamer UK staff listed Giygas as one of the most iconic boss encounters in Nintendo history, stating that the defining moment was his design and the method of defeating him. GamesRadar+ staff named him one of the best video game antagonists, finding him creepy and a more imposing villain than Kefka Palazzo from Final Fantasy VI. Staff for Complex, GameSpot, and UGO Networks listed the fight against Giygas as one of the hardest in video games, with the latter and Chloi Rad for IGN calling him one of the most frightening video game characters. He was featured in a GameSpot user-voted poll of the greatest villains in video games, where he lost in the first round to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic antagonist Darth Malak. Nadia Oxford for IGN described the battle with Giygas as one of the most memorable moments in EarthBound and stated that its significance resonated with people who had not played the game, a sentiment that Cassandra Ramos of RPGamer shared. In a work for 1UP.com, Oxford claimed that Itoi took inspiration from Stephen King novels, including It. She suggested that Giygas was based on It's antagonist due to a similarly "borderline indescribable" form and the fact that they both succumb to childlike qualities such as faith, friendship, and love. She discusses how the battle with Giygas in Mother deviates from traditional final boss battles, citing his deep motivations and music employed, which consists of a "shrill background noise" and a lullaby. She suggested that Giygas' degraded form in EarthBound was possibly the result of Giygas' longing for Maria's love.[26] Patricia Hernandez for Nightmare Mode discussed how his Mother incarnation "echoes a motif" of children without parental guidance doing poorly for it. Colin Snyder for Vice felt similarly, stating that his story is about the loss of childhood. William Hughes for The A.V. Club argued that Giygas had an oedipal complex due to his infatuation with his surrogate mother and hatred for his surrogate father over him stealing information from the aliens.

Giygas, also known as Giegue (Japanese: ギーグ Gyiyg), is the main antagonist in EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings.

Known as both the "Embodiment of Evil" and the "Universal Cosmic Destroyer", Giygas is an evil alien who, upon failing his original mission to reclaim the knowledge of PSI from humans, intends to sentence all of reality to the horror of infinite darkness. With an army of Starmen, Octobots and other deadly war machines, Giygas also uses his immense power to influence certain Earthlings to assist him, such as Pokey Minch and Geldegarde Monotoli. His influence also causes animals and people to become violent and distressed. He belongs to a race of aliens who originally had the power of PSI and, for unknown reasons, abducted humans in the 1900s and 198X.

Most of Giygas's operations take place in the city of Fourside.

Decades after his previous invasion, from unknown means Giygas' mental and physical state declined so much that his body and mind fell into ruin, appearing to lose all sense of guilt and restraint he became far more destructive and was sealed into the Devil's Machine to contain his newfound form and to what was left of his sanity. During this time Giygas invaded Earth once more and used plunged it into ruin becoming renowned as the Embodiment of Evil across the universe. Despite this, it has been suggested that Giygas still harbored emotions such as fear as he learned from the Apple of Enlightenment that he would meet his end by a boy named Ness and wanted to avoid this. Giygas decided to invade Earth ten years earlier in the past in 199X to prevent this possibility. In EarthBound Giygas used similar tactics he did in his earlier invasion manipulating the evils in the minds of humans, animals, and even inanimate objects with his influence, when confronted by the Chosen Four including Ness he attacked them with PSI alongside Pokey.

When the Devil's Machine was turned off by the former Giygas regressed back into a erratic and near mindless state as he howled out in pain and attacked the chosen four incomprehensibly. While before this point Giygas was hailed by many of his subordinates and Pokey as being nothing but pure evil, Giygas spoke to Ness and his friends most somberly, suggesting to some degree he was aware of how far he had fallen into madness, telling the four he was in great pain, telling them to "go back.", telling Ness he was sad, telling them "it was not right.", among other things revealed that traits of his old self remained. In this state the only thing that could effect him was positive emotion by act of praying which ultimately brought about his end.

Giygas returns to Earth many years later in 199X as the primary antagonist of EarthBound, though he vastly differs from his appearance in EarthBound Beginnings. Ten years in the future, Giygas has taken over the Earth and sent all in it to darkness. He discovers the Apple of Enlightenment which prophesizes his defeat at the hands of Ness and so travels back into the past in order to stop Ness. In the present day, his influence is spreading over Eagleland, in particular to Ness's neighbor Pokey Minch. Pokey becomes one of Giygas's main agents in the attack against Ness, aided by his jealousy of Ness. Giygas, already unstable from his guilt surrounding the loss of Maria, exerts such tremendous evil power that it destroys his entire being, including his mind, causing him to become undefinable by human standards. As such, Giygas manifests as what can only be described as pure evil; in Pokey Minch's words, "he is the Evil Power". Due to the loss of his mind, Giygas becomes irrational and incapable of thought. To rectify this, Pokey seals him in the Devil's Machine so that his power would be contained and his mind kept intact. In the final battle, Pokey attests that Giygas isn't aware of himself or what he is doing, referring to him as "an all-mighty idiot".

Now wielding a vast cosmic power which he is unable to control, Giygas becomes a threat to the existence of the universe itself. To stop him, one of the only known beings who manage to escape destruction in the future, an alien insect named Buzz Buzz, travels back to 199X. Buzz Buzz warns Ness of the impending catastrophe. Ness is given the Sound Stone and instructed to record the Eight Melodies in order to gain the power of Earth and be strong enough to face Giygas. Giygas's influence is further seen throughout the world, mainly in the form of enemies that Ness encounters. Now existing as the whole of evil power in the universe, Giygas is able to manipulate the evil in the minds of living beings, both human and animal, and can apparently manipulate even the forms of inanimate objects.

Ness and his friends, known in prophecy as the Chosen Four, are forced to abandon their bodies and travel into the past in order to attack Giygas in The Cave of the Past. In the final battle, Giygas is held within the Devil's Machine, which was created to contain Giygas's tremendous power. During the battle, Pokey shuts the machine off, causing all of Giygas's power to be unleashed; the event surrounds the four children in a chaotic, bizarre dimension of darkness. His attacks are random and incomprehensible, and his speech is erratic and mindless. Although Giygas was too powerful for Ness and his friends to overcome by fighting, he is eventually defeated after Paula calls out to the people of Earth to Pray (including the player), and the combined prayers reach Giygas and exploit his weakness, the same human emotion that weakened him in EarthBound Beginnings. He breaks up and is reduced to nothingness, and his apocalyptic future is erased.

The five phases of the battle are:

Devil's Machine and Heavily Armed Pokey, though during this phase only Pokey should be harmed. Giygas. Wounded Giygas 1, from this point onwards only pray is meant to be used to attack him. Wounded Giygas 2. Fatally Wounded.

In an interview about Giygas's appearance in EarthBound, Shigesato Itoi revealed that while Giygas is mostly something that can not be made sense of, a part of it is "like a living being that deserves love. That part is the breast of Hisako Tsukuba from “The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty”. "The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty" (憲兵とバラバラ死美人 "Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin") is a 1957 adult film that Shigesato Itoi accidentally saw as a child when he walked into the wrong theater, confusing a lovemaking scene that becomes a murder as rape. In fact, Itoi is incorrect about several details from the scene: he says that "When the guy grabbed her breast really hard, it got distorted into this ball shape. It all hit me really hard. It was a direct attack to my brain." despite the fact that this does not actually occur, and Itoi admitted that his memories of that scene were "fuzzy at best". However, from his memories of the scene, he added "this sense of terror having atrocity and eroticism side-by-side, and that’s what Giygas's lines at the end are. During the end, he says, “It hurts,” right? That's... her breast. It’s like, how do I put it, a “living-being” sensation."

Giygas's dialogue was created by both himself and a staff member Matchan Miura. Since Itoi did not know how to use computers at this time, the two of them would sit alone in a room with Itoi speaking the dialogue one Japanese letter at a time and Matchan typing in on the computer and it being displayed in hiragana. Itoi would then look at the screen and give Miura instructions on what to change, and a section would be finished once Itoi was impressed and they both were almost in tears.

disputed.

For many years, fans have debated and created multiple theories concerning Giygas. Two theories have achieved widespread acknowledgment and have been of popular debate. The following are three theories.

Some fans have noted a resemblance between Giygas's sprite in EarthBound Beginnings and Mewtwo from the Pokémon series and that they both are shown to have powerful psychic abilities. It is also interesting to note that Ape Inc, who worked on EarthBound Beginnings, later became Creatures Inc, one of the main developers of the Pokémon series. There is a persistent theory that Giygas is a fetus when encountered in the Cave of the Past that gained support by the fact that Ness traveled back in time to face Giygas and that one of the final undulations of Giygas's background during the battle makes the image appear to form the outline of a baby. However, the theory has been disproven due to Shigesato Itoi's explanation on the creation of Giygas and that the image is simply a coincidence, due to how EarthBounds backgrounds are generated. It is also clear that though Ness traveled back in time, it was to a point after the events of EarthBound Beginnings, where Giygas was a fully-grown alien. Another popular theory is that the face seen in the Devil's Machine is not that of Ness but that of Ninten, as it is impossible for Giygas to have seen Ness before the fight as the only time Giygas sees Ness is when they are in the robot bodies. He faced Ninten before and probably remembers him, which added credence to the theory, However, it is more probable that Giygas saw Ness through the Apple of Enlightenment and projected his face upon being confronted.

Brainshock is effective against Giygas in EarthBound, it can also make him attack himself. Giygas is one of the three characters who can use PSI Rockin, along with Ness and Ness's Nightmare. In Mother 1 + 2, it is actually possible to defeat Giygas outside of the scripting by poisoning him. Doing so earns no experience points and ends the battle as if it was normal. However, the ending proceeds normally with the minor difference that Tracy, King, and Ness's Mother are briefly seen in the Cave of the Past. After Giygas is defeated in EarthBound, the screen effect resembles a television screen being turned off. The static at the end of the Giygas battle also resembles the static shown at the beginning of the game, before the EarthBound logo. The line "You cannot grasp the true form of Giygas' attack!", and many of Giygas's dialogue lines have become internet memes. At one point in the battle against Drawcia in the game Kirby Canvas Curse, the background uses warping special effects similar to what is used on Giygas's background in EarthBound. It is possible, though unlikely, that this technique was inspired by the EarthBound technique. If one were to flip a picture of Giygas in his EarthBound appearance upside down, the "face" resembles the face of his appearance in EarthBound Beginnings. The incomprehension of Giygas's true form and his influence on the people of the world shares a lot of similarities to the likes of the creatures in the works of H.P. Lovecraft. This is backed by Pokey referring to Giygas as "an all-mighty idiot", where one of the nicknames of Lovecraft's Azathoth is "Blind Idiot God". Giygas and Pokey are the only enemies in EarthBound with in-battle dialogue.